A group of Miami high school students looked at their Little Haiti neighborhood through the lens of a camera—and saw it for the first time.

Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt.

Not far from the lavish, throbbing party that is Miami Beach, the saints and spirits of voodoo curl through Little Haiti in whispers. The students from Edison Senior High School who attended National Geographic's photography camp grew up between these worlds, and they have learned to navigate both. Their neighborhood is poor—a third of families live in poverty—and these kids can point out where the drug deals go down or where they last heard shots in the dark. But such things don't define the place for them. Their photographs reveal a bright community where neighbors chat on doorsteps, the slap of dominoes rings truer than the bang of guns, and voodoo—even if it is old school—still matters to people who journeyed here in boats, praying to spirits all the long, uncertain way. These students speak Creole, French, Spanish, and English. They want to be physicists, nurses, and artists. Most plan to build their lives here. And they want their work to show that stereotypes don't apply. "This camp helped me help Little Haiti," Diego Jeanty, 16, wrote in his photo journal. "Because now people can see what Little Haiti really is."